George Romero ( + Dead Reckoning)

Started by socketlevel, December 13, 2003, 05:17:23 PM

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MacGuffin

Romero rises again for zombie film
Untitled thriller has already started shooting
Source: Variety

Director George Romero is beginning production on an untitled thriller. Once again, the antagonists are flesh-eating zombies.Romero first mined zombies with "Night of the Living Dead" and has been cannibalizing the genre since, most recently with "Diary of the Dead."

Romero wrote the new film and began shooting this week in Ontario.

Plot involves inhabitants of an isolated island off the North American coast who find their relatives rising from the dead to eat their kin. The leaders of the island feud over whether or not to kill their reanimated relatives or preserve them in hopes of finding a cure.

Cast includes Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe, Devon Bostick, Richard Fitzpatrick, Stefano Colacitti and Athena Karkanis.

Paula Devonshire is producing. Romero is exec producer along with Peter Grunwald, D.J. Carson and Artfire Films' Ara Katz, Art Spigel and Dan Fireman. Voltage Pictures is handling international sales, and Cinetic Media will sell domestic.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Zombie master Romero's film targets discrimination

VENICE (Reuters) - Zombie master George A. Romero had no particular conflict in mind when making "Survival of the Dead," the sixth installment in his long-running horror franchise, but rather discrimination in general.

More than 40 years after "Night of the Living Dead" launched Romero's career in 1968, the 69-year-old American is back to his independent movie making roots with a picture in competition at the Venice film festival.

The self-financed Survival of the Dead tells the story of a band of soldiers lured to an island that promises to be the one place on earth where they can escape from the living dead, who feed on human flesh and appear as if from nowhere.

But they become embroiled in a generations-old dispute between two families who have radically different ideas on how to contain the zombies.

Patrick O'Flynn wants to put a bullet through the head of every zombie he can find, while his arch rival, Shamus Muldoon, wants to keep the "dead" alive in the hope of finding a cure.

"I wasn't looking at Iraq and saying, well, lets make a movie about Iraq," Romero told reporters on Wednesday.

"It's much more about man's underlying inability to forget enmity, forget their enemies even long after they've forgotten what started the conflict in the first place.

"I think that part of the problem is that nobody looks at both sides of any issue, it's automatically: I'm on this side or I'm on that side."

RETURN TO INDEPENDENT ROOTS

According to production notes for the film, Survival of the Dead is the second movie in Romero's new cycle of independent pictures made outside the studio system.

"We've made a couple of studio films and it's just a very different process," Romero said.

"These last two films, it's really like going back to the very original films that I made where it was really private financing and real guerrilla-style film making."

Night of the Living Dead was reportedly made on a shoestring budget yet came to redefine the horror genre with its violence and satirical view of American society.

"I've had the flexibility in these films to do whatever I wanted to do. At least there's no policeman looking over your shoulder ... There's no committee. That's a wonderful freedom to be able to have."

Romero credited the zombie's lasting cultural impact more to video games, like the Resident Evil series, than to his movies. "It's really not the zombie films. I think ... it's much more video games that have kept them alive."

Variety's review on the movie from Venice was largely negative, saying it was "steeped in fan-pleasing gore but woefully thin on ideas, originality ... or directorial flair. This is easily the least frightening of all the Dead movies."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

U.S. zombie fans to be denied Romero's latest?
Source: SciFi Wire

So, in a world in which Zombieland grosses $75 million in the U.S. alone and zombie-themed video games generate entire industries, when the animated Resident Evil: Degeneration gets a pretty healthy release on DVD and Blu-ray, why can't George Romero, the guy who created the apocalyptic flesh-eating zombie genre in 1968 with his Night of the Living Dead, not even get a DVD release in the U.S. for his latest zombie movie, Survival of the Dead?

According to Dread Central, a DVD release of Romero's Survival of the Dead is available for pre-order in the U.K., with a street date of March 15, 2010. This is a neck-chomping bummer for fans in the U.S. Given all the truly wretched, eye-meltingly bad movies that go right to DVD, isn't Romero worthy of at least that kind of release here on these shores?

As we reported in July, Survival of the Dead (which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival) concerns people who try to keep their recently deceased loved ones at home so they can lead some sort of normal "lives" until a cure for the zombie infection can be found. Given Romero's talent for social satire, this looks pretty tasty to us.

Given Romero's fan base, wouldn't even a no-frills DVD release of Survival of the Dead be worthwhile?
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

socketlevel

what's wrong with our world, the bad guys are winning.
the one last hit that spent you...

matt35mm

It's our fault for letting them have all the money and all the guns.

MacGuffin

Romero remaking Argento's 'Red' in 3D
Director revisits classic horror pic
Source: Variety

Get ready for "Deep Red" in 3D -- not by Dario Argento but from George A. Romero.

Romero is in advanced negotiations to helm a stereoscopic remake in English of Argento's cult classic, according to sources.

The 1975 "Deep Red," about a string of supernatural splatter murders, is considered Argento's gem giallo and the film that established his international standing.

The Romero-helmed 3D "Deep Red" redo is being set up as an Italo-Canadian co-production by Italian producer Claudio Argento via his Opera Film shingle. Robbie Little's The Little Company is preselling the pic in Cannes.

Claudio Argento, who is Dario's brother and regular producer, has penned the screenplay for Romero's redo.

Plan is to start shooting this fall in Canada.

Though Dario Argento and George Romero go back a long way -- he collaborated with Romero on zombie classic "Dawn of the Dead," on which he has producer credit, and they also co-directed "Two Evil Eyes" in 1990 -- Dario Argento will not be involved in Romero's remake in any guise.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Ravi

https://www.list.co.uk/article/105123-lost-george-a-romero-film-found/?fbclid=IwAR1pTZLuxkESs-euakzowJtSAaM3N7eGmFjp8HA3Sat7Ov0MUMrjdrms2fs

Lost George A. Romero film found
Bang Showbiz
13 November 2018

'The Amusement Park', a long lost film by George A. Romero, has been discovered and a campaign is underway to restore it for release

A long lost movie by the late George A. Romero has been discovered and a campaign is underway to restore the missing masterpiece.

The screenwriter-and-director – who passed away in July at the age of 77 – created some of the most revered horror films of all time starting with 'Night of the Living Dead' in 1968 but now a little known movie he released in 1973 called 'The Amusement Park' has been found.

Author Daniel Kraus discovered the missing movie – which is not listed on Romero's IMDB page amongst his credits – and after watching what he describes as Romero's "most overtly horrifying film" he has started a funding page in conjunction with the George A. Romero Foundation to raise enough money to restore it for a release.

In a series of Twitter posts which began with Kraus sitting down to view the movie, he wrote: "I'm about to watch George A. Romero's virtually unseen 1973 movie THE AMUSEMENT PARK (shot between Season of the Witch & The Crazies). Been trying to find this for 20 years ... OK, this movie is a REVELATION.

"With the exception of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD – maybe – THE AMUSEMENT PARK is Romero's most overtly horrifying film. Hugely upsetting in form & function.

"Where can you see this savage masterwork? You can't. But I'm dedicating myself to changing that. Can you help? Yes, probably. Give me some time to figure out what's what. This is truly one of those magical (cursed?) objects that I cannot believe has fallen through the cinematic cracks. We'll drag it back. I mean, THE AMUSEMENT PARK doesn't even show up on Romero's @IMDb page! This thing is long-long-long-lost. What does that tell me? It's dangerous & uncomfortable.

"Everyone's excited! That's good. This is Romero at the height of his full-throttle, machine-gun-edit, CRAZIES-era confidence. It's a sun-soaked nightmare: bright, loud, demented, disorienting. (It is *not*, as some sources report, a documentary.)

"But I repeat: there is *no* way to see this right now. That said, rest assured people are working on fixing that. It will take a little time. Please be patient. For right now, there *is* something you can do. @theGARFofficial is accepting donations toward the film's restoration. (sic)"

Since the funding page was set up the foundation has revealed that the money has been pouring in from horror aficionados desperate to view the movie.

Kraus tweeted: "A big day for Romero's lost 1973 film THE AMUSEMENT PARK! I've heard from @theGARFofficial that restoration donations are pouring in!! (sic)"

Before Kraus' reveal most fans of Romero's work had not even heard of the 'The Amusement Park, which was prevented from being released by the producers who were said to have been too disturbed by the filmmaker's fantasy documentary about the way society treats the elderly.

Recalling what the scholar Tony Williams said about the movie, Kraus tweeted: "Tony Williams, who saw the film 30 years ago, wrote 'The film is far too powerful for American society ... It must remain under lock & key never seeing the light of day.'

"It was never shown publicly. The people who funded it wouldn't allow it. And no wonder. It's hellish. In Romero's long career of criticizing American institutions, never was he so merciless."

'Trollhunters' writer Kraus is also currently working on completing Romero's unfinished novel 'The Living Dead'.